Thucydides Quotes
More Thucydides Quotes
The Gospels were not thought of as works of literature. People were not concerned with the literary reputation of Matthew or Mark, but with the substance of their records of our Lord's life. They did not have to respect their actual words, as they would if they were transcribing the works of Thucydides or Plato.
frederic g. kenyon— Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 135
They (Thucydides and Xenophon) maintained the dignity of history.
st john, henry, 1st viscount bolingbroke— On the Study and Use of History, letter 5 (1752). Compare Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, book xi. chap. ii.; Horace Walpole, Advertisement to Letter to Sir Horace Mann; Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England, vol. i. chap. i.
Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that had proceeded it.
Thucydides— Book I, 1.1-[1] (opening lines...)
The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.
horace walpole— Letter to Sir Horace Mann (1774-11-24).
The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.
— Horace Walpole, English art historian, writer, antiquarian and politician in a letter to Sir Horace Mann (1774-11-24).
"There is no reason to deny the Macedonians' own traditions about their early kings and the migration of the Macedones[..] The basic story as provided by Herodotus and Thucydides, minus the interpolation of the Temenid connections, undoubtedly reflects the Macedonians' own traditions about their early history.
— Eugene N. Borza, "In The Shadow of Olympus", p. 84, Princeton University Press
Thucydides, an Athenian , wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that had proceeded it.
— Book I, 1.1-[1] (opening lines...)
I believe it has been said that one copy of the Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.
— Richard Cobden, speech at the Manchester Athenæum, Dec. 27, 1850. See The Times, Dec. 30, 1830, p. 7. Quoted in Morley's Life of Cobden. Note, Volume II, p. 429. Also reference to same, p. 428.
I, for one, will be convinced that the Canada we know and love will be gone forever. But, then, Thucydides wrote that Themistocles' greatness lay in the fact that he realized Athens was not immortal. I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal; but, if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper.
pierre trudeau— Testifying before the Canadian Senate in opposition to the Meech Lake Accord (1988-03-30)
